You forget a third option. A monopolist doing the right thing from their good heart? Not gonna work. Legislators micromanaging every last aspect of every last thing through regulations? Not gonna work. Legislators squashing monopolies and making rules to keep competition intact and put meaningful choice into consumers' hands: Might work.
You have a company, it is worth below X dollars? You do what you want.
Above X dollars, now you get government minder for every decision.
All of the "buying to shutdown competitors"- not possible - you don't have enough cash!
Well I mean, it would be possible, but it would also carry huge risk. (As you don't have infinite cash reserves)
Keep your companies small and agile, stay focused on your primary initiative, distribute profits to your employees, build infrastructure, contribute back --- I like this.
> Legislators squashing monopolies and making rules to keep competition intact
You need both. Even restaurants are heavily regulated to avoid making people sick. To let restaurants make people sick until they go out of business seems a quick way to decimate your own population.
And yes, that everything is consolidated in a few monopolies makes everything bad and expensive. So, that seems a great thing to solve too.
All they do is convince people who think the 2nd doesn't work that the 3rd is just the 2nd with extra steps. Problem solved, rich get richer.
We need some of the 2nd. You can't micromanage as a legislator unless that's your entire domain, and I don't think anyone on congress right now is laser focused on software nor even big tech (where we 100% should have a committee by now). But at the very least some basic consumer protections would be nice.
Just to show how nakedly corrupt it is; we recently had a good law about subscription cancellations being easier. And I believe by now that's already repealed as it goes through predictable litigation. It's such a nakedly anti-consumer move, but we're so downtrodden that it barely registered as a blip.
